1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dynamic market equilibrium management system for the sale of goods and services, also sometimes referred to herein as a “management system” or “market equilibrium manager.” More particularly, it relates to such a dynamic market equilibrium management system for use in e-commerce applications, such as on-line buying groups of the type described and claimed in a related copending, commonly assigned application filed Mar. 15, 1999 in the names of Tom Van Horn, Niklas Gustafsson and Dale Woodford, and entitled “Demand Aggregation Through Online Buying Groups” now U.S. Pat. No. 6,631,356, issued on Oct. 7, 2003, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein. The invention further relates to a user interface allowing more convenient and skillful data management for hypothetical situations and related applications.
2. Introduction to the Invention
The above on-line buying groups invention provides a method and apparatus to globally locate, encourage and enable all buyers wishing to purchase a particular product or service within a given time frame to join forces in a buying group (“co-op”) formed specifically to accomplish the desired purchase. The co-op will enable individual buyers to leverage their combined purchasing power to achieve an economic bargain far superior to that attainable by any one buyer acting alone. This superior bargain most often will be reflected in terms of a lower price.
That invention also provides a method and apparatus that allows each buyer an opportunity to increase the volume of any given co-op in order to further increase group buying power within a co-op. It also includes a mechanism through which buyers can form any number of special interest groups, provide their collective wisdom to dictate which products are featured in future co-ops, or even make a market for a given product or service.
Other key aspects of that invention include a means to allow unprecedented access to certain true market data and pricing information derived from co-op member input during the life of each co-op. For example, all buyers wishing to join a co-op must submit a binding offer guaranteeing their willingness to purchase the featured item at or below some maximum price determined by each individual member. This collection of purchase offers provides valuable quantitative data regarding price sensitivity for the featured item. In addition, it permits real time yield management decisions that often will benefit both buyers and suppliers. Specifically, the invention provides data from which a supplier can be informed that if the product price is reduced by a specified amount, the co-op's pool of accepted offers—i.e., final sales—will increase by a specific quantity. The guaranteed increase in volume due to a reduced price would improve its overall yield. Under this scenario, both the co-op buyers and the product supplier benefit from the indicated price reduction.
The present invention provides a dynamic market equilibrium management system which permits one to quickly and conveniently define and achieve market equilibrium (i.e., the ideal point at which supply meets demand for a given product or service). When adapted for use with the related invention described above, it utilizes the true market data and pricing information made available through such related invention to allow more effective and skillful market management, such that market equilibrium can be quickly defined and achieved for any given co-op. While the present invention is especially adapted for use with the system, process and article of manufacture described and claimed in the related application, its features and advantages make it useful as well in a wide variety of other e-commerce applications and even for managing other markets which are not implemented in an on-line environment.
Other ways in which this invention provides unique benefits to market managers for the sale of goods and services in electronic commerce are set forth in various parts of this document below.
3. Background (Prior Art)
Historically there has been no way for a supplier to predict with certainty the price at which a product must be sold in order to increase sales volume by a specified amount. Under traditional sales models, pricing decisions are made based on estimates, such as anticipated product demand and presumed price sensitivity, in the hope that supply will approximate demand at the selected price. If a supplier of a particular item could rely on guaranteed purchase offers to increase volume at varying levels of acceptable sales prices and utilize a tool to quickly and skillfully define market equilibrium, such a tool would be extremely valuable to the supplier. Among other things, it would permit instantaneous, accurate yield management decisions that often would encourage win-win price reductions. The supplier wins by improving his overall yield based on volume, and the buyer wins by getting a lower per unit price.
Further, existing sales models and tools do not offer suppliers a clearly superior means of quickly reducing large quantities of specific product inventory (such as a close out item) in a way that will permit both maximization of yield and fast movement of an extremely large quantity of product. Similarly, there exists no clearly superior sales channel through which a supplier can readily turn to swiftly create an extremely large, global market for a specific product to significantly increase market share for that product, in a format that permits skillful yield management.
It is also known in existing spreadsheet programs to recalculate derived values automatically from data changes entered into the spreadsheet. Display of such recalculated values facilitates evaluation of hypothetical “what if” scenarios for making business decisions. However, this is done by changing a value in a cell of the spreadsheet, resulting in recalculating all variable entries dependent on the variable changed. It is not easy for the user to see the global effect of such changes without a careful review of the recalculated spreadsheet or separate screens showing graphs derived from the recalculated spreadsheet. The result is a cumbersome iterative process in which the user must change a value in a cell of the spreadsheet, obtain a graph of the resulting dependent variable changes, determine whether those results are as desired, if not, go back to the spreadsheet and make another value change in a cell, redraw the graph, and so forth until desired results are achieved. The process is even more cumbersome if the user desires to add a line to a graph, which requires the generation of new cells in the spreadsheet.
Specific examples of e-commerce systems implemented on the Internet or other networks are disclosed in the following issued patents: U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,928, issued Dec. 6, 1988 to Fujisaki; U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207, issued Aug. 11, 1998 to Walker et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,127, issued Aug. 18, 1998 to Walker et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,896, issued Nov. 10, 1998 to Fisher et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,265, issued Dec. 1, 1998 to Woolston.
Various examples of yield management systems and processes are disclosed in the following issued patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,700, issued Mar. 17, 1998 to Melnikoff; U.S. Pat. No. 5,270,921, issued Dec. 14, 1993 to Hornick; U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,184, issued Oct. 19, 1993 to Hornick et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,365, issued Sep. 15, 1992 to Denbo.
4. Benefits of the Invention
In order to join a co-op, each buyer must determine the maximum price at which (or below) he or she is willing to purchase the featured item. Such amount is specified in his or her binding purchase offer. That offer is guaranteed by the buyer's credit card. All offers including the various amounts at which they are submitted are collected and summarized in a database. This process enables accurate, real-time yield management decisions which can be used to advocate a lower per unit price. For example, the business entity implementing the invention would be able to determine ideal market equilibrium based on true market data, and represent to a supplier that if the price were lowered by $X, the sales volume will increase by an additional 1,000 units. Although the per unit price would drop, the supplier's overall profit yield may increase due to the substantial increase in volume. Hence, this invention permits the business implementing the invention to quickly and meaningfully assess the forces of supply and demand and communicate conclusions based on true market data to suppliers in order to eliminate the uncertainty that would otherwise make suppliers reluctant to lower prices.
Further, this invention provides instantaneous yield management capabilities which enhance virtually all aspects of the related buying groups invention. For example, the related invention's method of globally creating buying groups on a purchase by purchase basis provides a unique method of quickly moving large quantities of specific products. For instance, a supplier might utilize that invention's sales platform to sell a substantial volume of one product for the specific purpose of increasing its market share. A supplier also could utilize the related invention as a platform for unloading a large volume of specific products nearing the end of their product life cycle. Suppliers also might utilize the related invention as a means to accomplish swift inventory leveling for cash flow or financial reporting purposes. All such applications of the related invention are significantly enhanced by this invention because it enables suppliers to accomplish these objectives in a format that quickly and conveniently defines market equilibrium, which, in turn, permits them to maximize yield in each such transaction.
In contrast to the cumbersome procedure described above for use of a spreadsheet program to study results of “what if” scenarios, the direct manipulation of graphical visualizations of data with the user interface of this invention produces the changes in the underlying tabular data directly, so that the user sees the results of changes directly on the visualized data, without having to move successively between tabular spreadsheet data and a graph of that data. This direct versus indirect approach allows the much more convenient and skillful data manipulation for hypotheticals and similar situations.
Definitions
Certain terms as used herein are defined as follows:
Browser: A specific type of client system, referring to an HTTP client enabling the display of various forms of information originating at the server; also capable of sending information, such as requests and personal data, to the server at the request of the end user. A browser is not the only possible or intended client system. Our method and apparatus apply only to the server, and are not dependent on what form of client is used, only that some client exists as the means of input.
Co-op: For the purpose of this application, the term ‘co-op’ as used throughout is not intended to refer to the traditional cooperative form of business which is owned by all of its members. A business organization implementing this invention need not be organized as a cooperative. Instead, we use the term ‘co-op’ to refer to the online manifestation of buying groups who have committed to purchase a certain product within a specified price (i.e., at or below a maximum price). Co-ops are also occasionally referred to herein as ‘buying groups,’ ‘buying co-ops’ and ‘product co-ops.’
Critical Mass: The volume of acceptable offers necessary before any purchase offers will be accepted. The critical mass may be specified by a supplier. It may also be the sales volume at which the starting co-op price is justified.
Current Price: The price stated as current at any given time during the co-op. One significance of the current price is that availability is guaranteed for offers at or above such price after critical mass is achieved.
E-commerce server: Is here used to refer to a specific server software system, residing on a set of CPUs, that is used to send information to the client system(s) and accepting input from said clients for the sole purpose of taking orders, whether they are for co-ops or not.
Ending Price: The price specified at the end of the co-op, which represents the price at which all offers are accepted.
Featured Product: Any product or product variant identified for sale through a co-op. For purposes of this application, the term ‘featured product’ includes any services which might be identified for sale through a co-op.
HTTP: The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol.
HTTP server: A specific server software system, residing on a set of CPUs, which is used to communicate with client systems such as HTTP browsers. The HTTP server is only one means of communication between the client and server, and its inclusion in this discussion of our invention is not meant to imply that it is the only means of implementation of the invention.
Market Equilibrium: The ideal point at which supply for a given product or service meets demand for such product or service.
Offer or Purchase Offer: A binding, non-cancelable offer to purchase a featured product within a price range the maximum of which is specified by the buyer. Each such offer is guaranteed by the respective buyer's credit card at the time it is offered. Making an offer is a condition precedent to joining a co-op. The offer is either accepted or rejected at the close of the co-op.
Price Curve: A description of price as a function, in the mathematical sense, of the number of units. See FIGS. 3A–3E.
Products and Product Variant: A product is a set of items for sale, which all has a certain set of significant characteristics in common. For example, a particular brand and style of in-line skates, each having the same characteristics, such as design, brand, color, a left and a right skate sold together, etc. A product variant is a subset of a product. For example, size 5 and size 8 of a particular pair of in-line skates are different variants of the same product. As used herein, a product can be a tangible or intangible object or a service.
Server: The term ‘server’ is here used to refer to the set of hardware and software systems that are used to implement co-ops in accordance with this invention. These systems are to be distinguished from the client systems that are used by buyers to participate in co-ops. See FIGS. 2 and 4.
Server process: A computer program that is part of the server software systems, and which executes in its own address space, communicating with other processes via means defined by the operating system(s) of the hardware platforms. Unfortunately, it is necessary to use the term ‘process’ to describe other things than computer programs executing in their own address space in this application, so care has been taken to always use the term ‘server process’ when the latter is meant.
Starting Price: The price listed as the current price at the beginning of each co-op.